Since the initial test version going live I’ve been doing a lot of “Breathing & Digesting” - getting back to my day job, my wife being home … and also getting lots of great feedback for iterations + improvements. More on that soon…
What is Minute Cryptic?
www.minutecryptic.com is a daily game with just a single cryptic crossword clue each day.
That’s it - not a whole crossword, not a half-crossword … just one clue.
An example of Minute Cryptic’s daily puzzle
The game originated from the ‘host’ Angas posting videos of him solving + analysing single clues, and they eventually became the game in its own right.
solving a clue (or giving up) should take a minute (as the name suggests) at most.
✅ Easily accessible via the Web, optimised for mobile
a brilliantly designed website/app
✅ A single global session, once a day
Every day the whole world plays the same clue, then gets a countdown to the next day
✅ Players build a streak
While streaks have become less of a ‘thing’ maybe, you’re still shown your streak upon ‘landing’ on the splash page
✅ Shareable achievement
You’re achievement (and actually the whole clue) can be quickly shared post-solve.
➕ And they have a clue system, allowing players to reveal a hint, and also individual letters if they’re really stuck.
Subscribe to see how my iterations of hold! go:
One Vital Addition
As noted above, the game originated from social media videos, and indeed this has become a critical addition to the daily game convention:
➡️ A quick daily video accompanying each puzzle.
It’s these videos which ‘caught’ the social media algorithms and sent its engagement wild.
Now there’s two routes to a game spreading via word-of-mouth:
the game itself, and players sharing
the daily videos spreading over social media
These videos appear after solving (or revealing) and quickly explain how the clue works.
The post-solve screen with a thumbnail-link to the accompanying video.
Angas is humble and personable in these videos, and it plays right into the friendly and … just lovely aesthetic of everything about Minute Cryptic.
I used to dabble in motion graphics with Adobe After Effects, and the attention to detail in these explainer videos as they make letters shuffle about, and use of their brand’s colour, is just … 👌
It allows Minute Cryptic to remain ad-free and lovely, while the daily videos give them an ad-revenue from YouTube’s model. It’s an all round great way to support the game.
Stats
From this Times article on Minute Cryptic, you can read the full story but looking at their socials today, I see:
20,000-ish regular YouTube views of the daily explainer videos
almost 60,000 followers on TikTok
263,000 followers on Instagram
I don’t have up-to-date stats on how many daily players there are, but the Times article says in late September 2024 about 64,000 people played that day’s game of:
I love cryptic crosswords. For about five years I’ve been playing The Times’ Quick Cryptic every day. (I’m not good enough for ‘full fat’ cryptics.)
What’s great to see about Minute Cryptic is how their whole idea and approach has been validated by their success.
Typically, cryptic crosswords have had an air of … inaccessibility, something opaque and just … a bit weird?
If I told you the solution to:
Come back to harvest fruit (8)
was reappear … you’d probably be a bit … eh? 🤷♂️
Now, I could sit here and begin a full explanation of how cryptics work … but you probably don’t care.
And while the hobby has seen loads of great long-form videos on YouTube etc (Cracking The Cryptic among others) … who has time - or inclination - to watch a 50 minute live solve?
That’s where Minute Cryptic thrives, thanks to the speed of daily games.
It’s broken down something that was previously pretty opaque for most people, to a quick, fun, wholesome daily dose of ‘aha’ learning and sharing.
Comments on the YouTube videos of “I’ve been playing for several weeks and this is the first clue I solved without any hints!” are very common.
Their Roadmap
Minute Cryptic launched with just a mobile-first website and the daily videos: no logins, no app … nada.
Excellent!
Then after a while they announced their roadmap which they fulfilled as planned:
first they would launch accounts, whereby your ‘anonymous’ profile would be converted into an account, retaining your streak and solve stats history
then they would launch an iOS app (always annoys me as an Android user when this is done, but hey ho … I don’t personally need an app).
Then came the masterstroke … subscriptions with access to more features.
Subscriptions: A Deeply Engaged Player-Base Supporting A Valuable Proposition
Account service and bonus features for subscribers.
The features were:
access to the archive of all previous days (an absolute no-brainer for turning daily games into subscriptions)
a weekly mini crossword
submit your own clue system
with possibly more to come (extra daily clues etc)
The subscription charge was $9 a month, which personally I find high but the result was really impressive: I think about 4,000 people have subscribed as of March 2025.
April 2025 Updates: As he mentions in this video, Angas has now been able to go full-time on Minute Cryptic thanks to the members funding the game’s development. An incredible achievement! He even mentions AI coding!
Also - they have a book coming out! Incredible to see how much value they’re creating around cryptic crosswords … all thanks to the deep engagement of a daily game with personable videos accompanying each day.
Angas has gone full time on Minute Cryptic AND they’re releasing a book! I wonder if a book of “the 100 wildest charts from hold!”that includes how people responded to these charts would be an interesting read…
It’s not quite New York Times levels, but I’m amazed - and it goes to show the value of creating:
an aesthetically pleasing daily game
with engagement fuelled by easily watchable daily videos
helping to open up something previously opaque to a whole new audience
As a ‘side gig’ that monthly income would be incredible.
Which leads me to…
A model for hold!
Just as Minute Cryptic opened up cryptic crosswords to a new audience via the medium of a daily game …
… what if personal finance and the incredibly off-putting phrase retirement wealth planning could be given the same treatment?
And ultimately turned into a viable side-gig (or main gig, who knows)?
That’s my grand plan for hold! - a quick, fun, educational daily game that gets people into the concept of long-term, diversified wealth planning (and also the concept of the stock market) in a safe way.
Players can learn about their emotional response to the unavoidable volatility of even the most diversified strategy, and so prepare accordingly.
Of course there’s still the books, the blogs and all the other recommended ways to learn - but hold! could be the digestible daily way to get into these.
The key is it’s about the player’s emotional response to the daily games - all the tactical advice of what to do in their particular situation (geographically and demographically) comes after they’ve emotionally accepted the facts of best-practice investing.
Funny timing: the start of April 2025 was the launch of Donald Trump’s trade war, which created … volatility, shall we say, in the markets. It’s exactly these kinds of real world events that hold! can help players prepare for, and emotionally connect with the safety of a long term diversified outlook. I really do think this game can serve an important purpose of learn-through-play!
The Video Imperative
What Minute Cryptic has made clear is the importance of an accompanying daily video.
It’s a lot easier for them because Angas can just spend an hour one day to record two week’s worth of videos, for example (because obviously they know what clue will appear each day, and can pre-program each video accordingly).
The tricky thing with hold! is that I think the ‘viral hook’ would be in seeing how everyone else performed for a given game - what patterns emerged from today’s psychological experiment? How many people hit the peak? What have we learnt?
But this means a legit daily video, recorded each day after the day in question.
Doable … but harder than just rackin’ up a fortnight’s worth of videos in one sitting.
My Roadmap for hold!
And so, here is my plan
Launch the mobile-first daily game with retrospective videos of the global performance for the previous day
share these videos via YouTube, TikTok and Instagram
Keep going and see if I get enough traction…
Launch Accounts so players can play cross-device and retain streak/stat history
Maybe do an app? I’m unconvinced of the need.
If engagement is enough, then launch subscriptions for extra features
beyond archive access I have some idea of what these could be, but it would really depend on player feedback
See what happens…
A Word of Warning: A tale of two games
What’s interesting with Minute Cryptic is it might have been a case of right time, right place that isn’t easily replicated.
Daily Crypticle is a daily game that almost matches Minute Cryptic exactly, (I don’t know when it launched, I’m not saying it copied MC, just that it’s similar).
The difference is that Daily Crypticle follows the Wordle pattern (grey, yellow and green tiles for guess-success).
One of the daily explainer videos of Daily Crypticle
And for whatever reason (you can have your own views on the aesthetics of the game and videos) it has just not had the same success as Minute Cryptic.
Their daily explanation videos get around 1,000 views - which is respectable! - and recently they’ve launched a Patreon to try and help support the game (I also note there’s now ads plastered all over the game site…).
But it’s just interesting, a bit like when two movies are released with very similar plots. People remember Armageddon … Deep Impact less so.
There’s even Morning Cryptic which just uses YouTube’s Posts feature for the actual clue, and then the video for the explanation. The most a video seems to get is 1,000 views with a few hundred daily views perhaps being the norm.
Is it the TikTok / Instagram effect that’s missing? The aesthetics? The luck?
Who knows, but something to remember.
Next Steps
I’ve gotten such valuable feedback from friends, family and colleagues to the test version of hold! … and now it’s a case of “finding the time” to mock-up my improvements, test them with some people, and then begin the work.
Quite when that will happen … I don’t know 😕 … it will have to be evenings and weekends. Somehow.
But I’m super excited about my improvement ideas.
The gameplay will expand to make the daily game a bit meatier and think-ier, it will bring the long-term thinking from post-sell text (that nobody read) into the gameplay itself, and it will have a clearer proposition on playing the ups and downs of money and your emotions.
More on all of that … soon, once I have the mock-ups!
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